Kukla's Korner Hockey

So, in the latest tally, three Maple Leafs, two Senators and an injured superstar would man the starting lineup for the NHL all-star game as voted for by the fans.

To paraphrase Homer Simpson, when will they figure out that democracy doesn’t work in hockey?

No less an authority than former NHL journeyman Rory Fitzpatrick says there has to be a better way than this to pick players who are truly deserving of an all-star nod.

“It’s obviously flawed,” says Fitzpatrick, a workaday defenceman who was the unwilling beneficiary of a ballot-stuffing campaign in Vancouver five years ago. “You get guys that are injured or haven’t played and they’re at the top of the voting.

“And this year you have all the Senators and Leafs. There’s obviously something wrong.”

Comments

I don’t think there’s any doubt that the NHL allows a certain amount of electronic stuffing based on the regional nature of the ASG and/or the team that last won the Cup.

It’s almost predictable that you’re going to conveniently see more Hurricanes in Carolina, more Senators and Maple Leafs in Ottawa, etc. etc., regardless of whether it’s right or wrong…

And the voting really has gotten somewhat laughable overall. Despite NHL.com’s requests that fans surrender personal information and “register” to vote, fans have found ways around the various security features and know how to create programs that stuff the electronic ballot box.

That seems to be why the NHL’s moved further and further away from fan voting—we used to be able to vote the starters of both “teams” in, but when you’re all but complicit in allowing programmers who happen to be hockey fans to send 12 players to an All-Star game, you’re going to shrink that down to six…

I think that we’re going to eventually see a point where there will be a fan starter or three and nothing more as opposed to an earnest “crackdown” by the NHL’s web department.